Patrick Moore and Anna Aurillo Debate The Necessity of Nuclear Power

Nuclear energy has been a controversial topic ever since the first reactor powered four 200-watt light bulbs in the Idaho desert in 1951. Today, the United States is gearing up for the next generation of reactor designs, breathing new life into the decades-old debate. Here, Patrick Moore and Anna Aurilio present compelling arguments both for and against pursuing nuclear power as an answer to the country's energy problems.

Sep 12, 2006

Popular Mechanics Show: The Nuclear Option

When I helped found Greenpeace in the 1970s, my colleagues and I were firmly opposed to nuclear energy. But times have changed. I now realize nuclear energy is the only non-greenhouse gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy growing demand for energy.

Nuclear power plants are a practical option for producing clean, cost-effective, reliable and safe baseload power.

Nuclear energy is affordable. The average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States is less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric.

Nuclear energy is safe. In 1979, a partial reactor core meltdown at Three Mile Island frightened the country. At the time, no one noticed Three Mile Island was a success story; the concrete containment structure prevented radiation from escaping into the environment. There was no injury or death among the public or nuclear workers. This was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States. Today, 103 nuclear reactors quietly deliver 20 percent of America's electricity.

Spent nuclear fuel is not waste. Recycling spent fuel, which still contains 95 percent of its original energy, will greatly reduce the need for treatment and disposal.

Nuclear power plants are not vulnerable to terrorist attack. The five-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects contents from the outside as well as the inside. Even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode.

Nuclear weapons are no longer inextricably linked to nuclear power plants. Centrifuge technology now allows nations to produce weapons-grade plutonium without first constructing a nuclear reactor. Iran's nuclear weapons threat, for instance, is completely distinct from peaceful nuclear energy generation, as they do not yet possess a nuclear reactor.

New technologies, such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more difficult to manufacture weapons using civilian materials.

Finally, excess heat from nuclear reactors offers a practical path to the 'hydrogen economy', and can address the increasing shortage of fresh water through desalinization.

A combination of nuclear energy, wind, geothermal and hydro is the most environmentally-friendly way to meet the world's increasing energy needs. Nuclear power plants can play a key role in producing safe, clean, reliable baseload electricity.

An advisor to government and industry, Dr. Patrick Moore is a co-founder and former leader of Greenpeace, and chair and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. in Vancouver, Canada. He and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman are co-chairs of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports increased use of nuclear energy.

Nuclear Energy is Simply Not Necessary

By Anna Aurilio

Nuclear energy is too expensive, too dangerous, and too polluting. And despite claims from the nuclear industry, it's simply not necessary either for our future electricity needs or to meet the very real challenge of global warming. Worldwide, renewable alternatives such as wind, solar and geothermal power, along with small decentralized heat and power cogeneration plants, already produced 92 per cent as much electricity as nuclear power did in 2004 - and those sources are growing almost six times faster. A recent study prepared by Synapse Energy Economics found that by using clean energy technologies in the next twenty years, the U.S. could cut our reliance on nuclear in half, reduce projected carbon dioxide emissions from electricity by 47% and save consumers $36 billion annually.

After 50 years and more than $150 billion dollars in subsidies, the nuclear industry is still unable to build a plant on its own. With the new incentives in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, taxpayers would be covering 60 to 90 per cent of the generation cost of electricity from a new nuclear plant. What do we get for our money?

In a post-9/11 world, nuclear facilities will always be a tempting target for terrorists, and government studies have highlighted the weaknesses in our current safeguards.

Even without attackers, the danger of an accident is ever-present. The Davis-Besse plant in Ohio narrowly avoided a disaster in 2002 when inspectors found a hole that had corroded almost all the way through a pressure vessel, leaving just 3/16 of an inch of steel preventing the release of radioactive steam. Instead of clamping down, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seems more intent on loosening safety rules to help aging plants keep operating for longer. .

And when plants are operating perfectly, they're still producing high-level radioactive waste. No country in the world has solved the problem of how to dispose of it, and even the most optimistic advanced reactor designs will continue adding to the lethal mountain of waste already produced.

The argument that nuclear energy is our best bet to reduce global warming emissions only makes sense if you pretend that coal is the only other option. That's a false choice, and it ignores the rapidly developing range of energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy sources. Whatever challenges still face technologies like solar and wind power, they pale compared to the fundamental security and environmental problems that won't be fixed by any new reactor design. For 30 years, no one has ordered or built a new nuclear plant, for very good economic reasons. Now Congress and the nuclear industry are trying to distort the market with new subsidies. They're pushing a technology with serious health, safety and economic risks, and in doing so diverting research dollars away from better alternatives.

Anna Aurilio is the Legislative Director for U.S. PIRG responsible for policy development, research and advocacy on energy issues and anti-environmental subsidies. She has testified numerous times before House and Senate Science, Energy and Appropriations committees. Ms. Aurilio received a bachelor's degree in Physics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1986 and a Master's degree in Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. Prior to receiving her Master's degree, Ms. Aurilio was a Staff Scientist with the National Environmental Law Center, and the PIRGs' National Litigation Project for three years.

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